Nigeria has issued a revised, clearer rulebook for moving gas through its pipelines, hoping predictable rules will draw part of the $30 billion to $50 billion in new oil and gas investment it says it needs by 2030.
The Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority (NMDPRA) launched Revision 2 of the Gas Transportation Network Code on Oct. 26 at an industry conference in Lagos. Nigerian Banking Launch
For foreign investors, the new document matters less for what it says about gas than for who gets access to the pipes, and on what terms.
What the code does
Several producers feed gas into the same pipeline network, so someone has to decide how they get in, how much each can ship and who pays when volumes don’t match.
The code covers open and non-discriminatory access, capacity booking, nominations (the scheduling of gas flows), balancing of imbalances, and metering and quality standards where gas enters and leaves the system.
It dates to 2020. Revision 1, in 2024, brought more shippers onto the network. NMDPRA said imbalances on the Western Network fell about 30 percent in the first half of 2026.
Revision 2 promises what the authority calls cost-reflective, transparent tariffs and better measurement at entry and exit points.
The authority’s chief executive, Rabiu Umar, said pipelines deliver their full value only when access is open and fair.
‘A shipper that can’t predict whether it will get capacity, or what it will be charged, can’t price a project. That is the gap the code is meant to close,’ Umar said. Why investors are being courted now
Nigeria holds about 215 trillion cubic feet of gas reserves, the largest in Africa, yet uses only about half of its 16.2 billion cubic feet a day of installed processing capacity, according to the regulator’s figures.
‘The resource is not a constraint,’ Umar told BusinessDay. ‘Investment and infrastructure are.’ Demand at home is running ahead of supply. Cooking-gas consumption reached 5.2 thousand tons a day in September against supply of 4.7 thousand. Authorities want the LPG market to grow from 1.8 million tons a year to 4 million by 2030, and more households to switch from firewood to gas.
The pipeline build-out is the other half of the pitch. Two projects, the OB3 line and the Ajaokuta-Kaduna-Kano pipeline, are meant to lift gas transport capacity from 2.2 billion cubic feet a day to 4.2 billion, linking southern supply to northern demand.
NMDPRA said the northern line is more than 80 percent built. Other projects it cites include a seventh liquefied natural gas train, which would raise NLNG’s capacity from 22 million tons a year to 30 million, and a fourth train at the Indorama fertiliser complex.
Beyond gas, the authority is offering depots, jetties, coastal shipping and product pipelines to private capital through public-private partnerships.
Revision 2 also sets initial rules for proposed trans-African pipelines, including routes toward Morocco and Algeria.
Umar said gas can’t cross borders if each country measures and hands over custody differently, so standards need to match. Those pipelines remain under discussion, and nothing in the keynote suggested financing or timelines.
Nigeria already exports gas to its neighbours through the West African Gas Pipeline, which took about 0.134 billion cubic feet a day in September. That is far less than the roughly 2.8 billion that went to NLNG and the roughly 2.1 billion used domestically